"the power of Christ compels you"

 This past weekend they had the largest manhunt in the history of the state of Minnesota, looking for the individual who murdered the Speaker of the House of their state legislature and her husband, as well as shooting a state senator and his wife, who survived.

Both couples were shot in their own homes in the 2 to 3 a.m. time of night.

The person alleged to have done this is Vance Boelter.  Police found him Sunday after a woman spotted him and called it in.

        Police say they found notebooks in the 57-year-old Boelter's vehicle with lists of people he wanted to kill, with their addresses.

He had apparently planned these activities, and stalked the victims and intended victims, who were all Democrats.

        Listening to reports and updates about this incident, I thought about two things:

--  grandiosity

and

--  evil.

Information about the suspect sounded like he was basically weaving stories about himself that he thought would make people think he was "important."

He had a "Security Company" on a website on the Internet, but no clients.

He wrote on the Internet that he had consulted on security in the Congo.

        (Oh - kay.... - ?)

This made me remember when a guy at work, years ago, told people that he used to work for the Highway Patrol in Colorado, and one of the managers said to me, "I don't believe he ever worked for the Highway Patrol in Colorado."

        I was kind of surprised by that.

        It had not occurred to me to question what someone said about a job they used to work in.  I would just take it at face value.

        The manager, Jim, had worked in environments where there was a wider variety of people than the environments I had worked in, and he kind of opened my eyes to being a little skeptical, sometimes. ...

Item #2:  evil

A friend and I had a conversation in the late '90s where I mentioned a crime that had been in the news and I said, "You know, I think we don't think about 'evil' very much, because we don't want to think about it, it's too disturbing and scary, and also - this is modern life, we don't believe in an actual person whose name is 'Satan' who goes around causing Bad Things.

        But then we hear about some of these crimes, and abuses, and if you really think about it, you realize - even if you don't want to - evil does seem to exist."

And she understood what I was saying and she agreed.

To contemplate evil, I think of the movie The Exorcist.  

(A little extreme.)

        It came out when I was a freshman in high school.

        (My family had just moved to a small town in the Midwest.

                  Great time to move - when you're starting high school.  

          That's scary enough! - You don't need The Exorcist! - LOL!)

I didn't see the film at that time - I read about it in either TIME magazine, or Newsweek.  Reading about it was bad enough.  I thought, "Well, that sounds just horrifying."

        One guy at our school saw it and talked about it.

I sort of saw it, a couple of decades later when it was on a cable TV channel - had it on while doing some things at home, and prepared to cover my ears and close my eyes, or just simply turn it off, at any moment.

"The power of Christ compels you!

The power of Christ compels you!..."

...And the reason I think of these things is, when I listened to the news reports about these murders, and planned murders, in Minnesota, law enforcement people used the word "evil" several times.

        One of them used the word "evil" twice in one sentence.

That's new.

-30-